I gotta say this is one of Rentals.com best ideas - translate the site in Spanish. There is many great reason to do this which I am not going to go in to. I did this myself over a year ago on one of my vacation rental sites.
Now the big question is if they are charging $20 to translate your ad in to Spanish, is that done by a real person or is it done automatically?
If it is done automatically then they are shooting themselves in the foot because property managers will not pay that much for an automated process. And their great idea backfires.
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Why not apartment guide in spanish also?
Not that I don’t care about apartments, it is just that I specialize in house rentals.
By the way I went to apartment guide and could not locate the Spanish version.
Apartment Guide is there big money maker and it is suprising they do not have that feature on that site.
So does anyone know if the process is automated or done by a live person?
I guess I will ask them next week at the conference.
There are lots of free translations services out there. Its hard to believe they would charge for it. I would think the person needing a page translated would already be aware of these free services such as this here: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rentvine.com%2Fblog%2Findex.php%2Frentalscom-in-spanish-good-idea%2F&langpair=en%7Ces&hl=en&ie=UTF8
It is hard to believe that they would charge for it if it is automated.
Perhaps we will see RentalHomesPlus add it as a free service.
If you need it to be translated is it possible you don’t speak the language?
If you are an owner or a property manager that has a property in a high concentration area of Spanish speaking individuals, wouldn’t you just have a Spanish speaking leasing agent write the ad for you and save yourself $20 bucks.
Why would you have a company translate your English version into Spanish. If you don’t speak Spanish, and no one else in your office does. How are you going to communicate to the renters that are replying to the Spanish ad?
I don’t care if you can translate my ad into hundreds of languages, if I can’t communicate with them it is useless.
I think that it makes your site more usable for someone that is fluent in that language but also speaks English.
Having an easy site to use is a big bonus.
Are there any SEO benefits? Maybe you get to own the space on a spanish search engine.
[...] want to know what the “better features and tools” are - does that include translating the listing to Spanish? That is the only new feature I have noticed in a long time. Are the reps informing the property [...]